Although often considered a splurge, subscription boxes can be quite the little life-savers. Say you always forget to buy razor blades until it’s too late (read: you’ve got serious razor burn)? There’s a subscription box for that. Never remember to eat breakfast in morning and feel totally drained by noon? There’s a subscription box for that. Or maybe you never have anything fun (cough, cough, educational) to do with your kids on a rainy day. Yep, there’s even a box for that. While you can’t possibly sign-up for them all, we’ve rounded up the top-rated options to help you make the best choice.
Why We Love It: Trunk club is basically like having a personal stylist, but at a fraction of the cost. Their men’s and women’s style quiz is super thorough to ensure that each “trunk” is filled with clothing you’ll love. What’s even better is that you can approve its contents before it’s shipped to your door. Once you try everything on, you choose what to keep (and pay for) and send back the rest at no cost. You can do this on a monthly basis, or whenever you feel like you need to spruce up your wardrobe.
Why We Love It: With the number of perfumes out there, it can be hard to find your signature scent. Even when you do find one you like, you’re usually so over it by the time you reach the bottom of the bottle. Scentbird allows you to mix up your perfume and cologne game each month with 450+ high end scents to choose from – leaving you smelling fresh as a flower.

Why We Love it: You know the best way to put on jeans? Put on a pair of leggings instead. Not only is the quality of Fabcrate’s apparel top of the line, but it’s just plain stylish. Each piece they send you will easily make you the trendiest person in your hot yoga class, and Becky with the obnoxious floral leggings green with envy. These guys are one of our favourite monthly subscription boxes!

Dollar Shave Club. Subscription grooming boxes aren’t just for women. The Dollar Shave Club is a monthly service that delivers high-quality razor cartridges for both men and women. Choices range from a two-blade razor for $3 per month to a six-blade model for $9. If you don’t like the blade you’re using, you can switch membership levels at any time. When you first join, you get a handle to go with your cartridge of choice and a selection of sample-sized grooming products, such as “shave butter”; if you like them, you can add on a full-sized version to your monthly delivery.
6. Love With Food: Looking for a guilt-free way to satisfy your 3 p.m. cravings? Look no further than Love With Food. Each box is filled with an assortment of healthy, organic snacks (think chocolate chip granola, honey apple oat bars and spicy fava beans).The boxes come in three different sizes: Tasting Box, Deluxe Box and the Gluten-Free Box. You can opt for a monthly, quarterly, six-monthly, or annual subscription. Plus, for every box sold, Love With Food donates a meal to charity. So you can stock up your pantry with delish munchies and contribute to a great cause at the same time.
Other services offer books for more specific audiences. For instance, Comic Bento ships a monthly assortment of graphic novels with a cover value of at least $50 for $25. OwlCrate is a themed monthly box containing a young adult novel and various related items like pens, bracelets, and bobbleheads for $29.99 plus shipping. OwlCrate Jr. provides the same service for tweens, with subscriptions starting at $27.99 a month plus shipping.
7. Pipsticks: If the idea of receiving packs of cute stickers every month in your mail gets you excited then you need to get a Pipsticks subscription ASAP! They offer two subscription services — for kids and for 'pros' (adult sticker enthusiasts). Each monthly package comes with 15 or more sheets of theme-based stickers, a quote card and a fun postcard to share the sticker craze with your loved ones or pen pals. From funky food trucks and glittery unicorns to raindrops, beaches and scratch-and-sniff strawberries — each monthly pack will make the #stickeraddict in you squeal with joy. Plus, they're all set to launch a collection of chic journals, sticker books and planners that will be available from June (Spoiler: the planners come with sparkly, holographic pouches, creative prompts, sticker sheets, patterned sticky notes and much more!). You can pre-order yours here.
4. London Tea Club: If you're a tea drinker who wants to get out of the comfort zone and explore the delicious world of rare and exotic loose leaf teas, you should subscribe to the London Tea Club already! Each month you get a new tea carefully packed in a glass vial. The box also includes a detailed note about the tea, tea estate where it was grown and the brewing instructions. The selection is curated with seasonal tea drinking in mind - something LTC's Director Cecelia Lau prefers herself. For instance, this month the subscribers got to enjoy tangy Zomba Pearls White Tea from Malawi. Lightly processed teas are perfect for summer as they are considered to be more cooling. These include white teas, green oolong teas and most young sheng and green teas. Meanwhile, roasted, fermented and aged teas which are considered to be warming are selected for their winter boxes. These include black/red teas, shou puerh, aged sheng puerhs, roasted oolongs, highly oxidized oolongs and certain roasted green teas like Hojicha. Moreover, the selection is responsibly sourced from small farms and independent cooperatives that encourage sustainable tea farming, so the curated teas are all-natural and organic.
Is It More Than You Need? A box isn’t a good value if it’s going to tempt you into buying more of any one item than you would normally want. Even if the cost per item is good, it’s likely to be more than you’d spend buying just one item each month. Plus, you’ll be cluttering up your house with more socks, cat toys, or bottles of nail polish than you can use.
Custom Picked Items. With many subscription boxes, the items you receive each month are chosen especially for you, based on your particular needs and preferences. This can be a major boon for people who have trouble finding what they like in stores, or who just don’t enjoy shopping. And for many people, knowing the items were chosen just for them increases the thrill of opening a new box. According to Dorman, getting these “handpicked” items boosts people’s self-esteem and “makes them feel unique.”
BeautyFIX is Dermstore’s contribution to the skin care and beauty realm of subscription boxes. Curated by skin care experts, each monthly BeautyFIX includes six or more products adding up to a total value of $100+ (that’s about four times what you’ll pay for it!). In each box, you can expect to see a healthy mix of full-size and deluxe-travel-size products—including skin care, hair care and cosmetics handpicked by beauty experts and delivered right to your door. Brands included in previous boxes include: Avene, Paula’s Choice, Skinceuticals, ByTerry, Jane Iredale, Juice Beauty, and more.